Lum: Just one more time

Surely everybody has voted by now, but the week before an election, I can't cop out and write about things such as the nice harvest we got from Ziska Childs' seed potatoes (thanks, Ziska!).

Mail-in ballots change the whole momentum of an election. I'm not complaining — I was happy to fill in my ballot just now, slap a couple of stamps on it and pop it into my sweet home mailbox with the flag up.

But back to the point, with residents being able to spread their votes out over three weeks, dilemmas arise. When should you send out those mailers? When should the newspapers endorse (don't get me started on the endorsements)? Should Squirm Night occur after 50 percent of the voters have cast their ballots or the day people get the ballots in the mail, when they might forget the points that were made? Things like that — nobody knows when to do what.

In the flurry over Base2, the advisory question regarding City Hall is being lost in the shuffle, probably silent "by design," as they say, because there are no facts regarding the financing or designs forthcoming, just dreamscapes. I hate to dispute with my cousin Tony Vagneur, but if we approve the community use of that building, it will mean that an extra 20,000 square feet will be added onto the 30,000-square-foot building on the Rio Grande property.

That is a huge building that we don't even need. No. Keep City Hall for office space. Should we add City Hall to the places we already own and don't use, like the lumberyard, or places we use badly like the old art museum, while building a colossus on the Rio Grande? This is a pig in a poke.

The Base2 question has flown off the rails (with a little expensive push) and has turned into "Would you rather have a sweet little inexpensive hotel or a huge pharmacy that will take down Carl's?" This ridiculous, planted rumor has been trumpeted by the media and elected officials who should know better.

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I'm voting a big "no" on Base2, question 2A. Carl Bergman knows better — if he feared a Walgreens, he'd be all for the hotel, but he's not. Let us hope that saner minds prevail — this vote is about giving away too many variances and trying to put a stop to it.

In response to my column last week, I got an email from Kathy Goudy explaining that the "J" in what we've always known as CMC was basically a technicality and saying that I definitely should endorse question 4D on the back on my ballot (yours may vary) regarding CMJC's ability to improve its bandwidth and Internet services — pretty much the same as the county asks for in question 1A.

Here's what she said about that: "The broadband initiative is very important for CMC and the towns and counties it serves. We have had a dickens of a time getting large Internet providers to provide substandard Internet for our campuses. If the initiative passes, CMC would be able to build its own towers and provide decent, fast broadband to all our sites."

I liked the tone of her letter and voted for her as trustee (she is the only CMJC trustee running with opposition) as well as "yes" on 4D.

Anyway, I've already voted, so as far as I'm concerned, it's just waiting with bated breath for the returns to come in Tuesday.

Su Lum is a longtime local who will go to her grave without telling if she voted for the maverick for school board. Her column appears every Wednesday in The Aspen Times. Reach her at su@rof.net.